


call me

by canary



Series: call me [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Getting Together, Knotting, M/M, Philadelphia Flyers, Rimming, anything can be a slow burn if you try hard enough, dumbasses to lovers, heat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-13 11:43:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21243548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canary/pseuds/canary
Summary: Nolan Patrick had never had a heat come early in his life.





	call me

**Author's Note:**

> Why did I decide to write the Teeks/Patty A/B/O no one asked for? Unclear.
> 
> Insert a hand-wave for the schedule and pretend the Sens game happened a week before TK’s actual birthday. (Also, Travis Konecny is a Pisces! Life is a rich and varied tapestry.)
> 
> Title inspiration is from Sarah Darling’s “Call Me,” which is a great song for these two losers.
> 
> Content note: what I would consider to be canon-typical, non-judgmental references to diet, nutrition, and weight for two professional athletes.

The night after they beat the Isles, the whole team went out to a club in Center City since they finally had a few Ws to celebrate. That was where Nolan felt it: the vague, bone-deep itch that was always the first sign of his heat.

Being an omega had never been that much of a problem for him, which he knew made him lucky as hell. Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews had blown the league’s doors open while he was still in Juniors; and he was from a hockey family, where you were expected to get your ass on the ice whether you were a girl or an omega or one of the super-unathletic cousins. And Nolan mostly got mistaken for a beta anyway. He was too big to get stereotyped, and people told him he barely smelled like anything at all.

And he had never had a heat come early in his life. He pulled up his phone calendar, angling the screen so TK couldn’t see it.

“Whatcha lookin’ at, Pats,” he whined anyway, leaning into Nolan’s shoulder. He was either drunk or just being himself; Nolan was never sure.

“Nothing.”

“No phones,” TK announced, making a grabby hand at Nolan’s phone. “Only bros.”

“Go bother G,” Nolan said. “Or any of the three other dudes at this table who have their phones out.” He shoved Travis towards Sanheim, who was swiping away on Tinder, and looked at his calendar. Nope, he hadn’t forgotten the date of his March heat for the first time since he hit puberty: there it was, sandwiched in the three-day break between the Sens and the Caps. His heats never lasted longer than a day so he shouldn’t even have to miss a game for it.

But here he was, feeling—whatever. Kind of prickly, pinned in a booth between TK and the wall. He couldn’t help but be aware of how many of the guys around the table, how many of the guys at the next table over, were alphas.

Normally he didn’t give a shit.

Normally he’d be locked up in his apartment the physician-recommended six hours before he felt the first sign of a heat.

But it was okay. He had plenty of time; he didn’t need to make it weird.

Travis flopped back in his direction, landing on his shoulder and kind of—snuffling his way into Nolan’s neck.

“Pattyyyyy.”

“What.” He locked his phone and maneuvered it back into his pocket.

“You smell good.”

He’d maybe be worried if this was not also typical drunk Travis Konecny behavior. “Shut up, shithead.”

“No, like _really_ good.” TK was breathing into his neck, close enough that Nolan could feel the heat of his breath. If that gave Nolan a goose bump or two, he ignored them—it was just the stupid hormones.

“Okay, that’s enough for you, bud,” G announced, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and towing him out of the booth behind Sanheim. He always noticed when TK was getting handsy, which was real apex alpha captain shit. (Sometimes it pissed Nolan off, to be honest. What, he thought he had to protect his team’s 6’2, 200-pound omega from schmedium Teeks? And did he not get that if Nolan didn’t need someone to protect him from TK during 2am tipsy-angry Halo, he didn’t need someone to save him at _team events_? In _public_?) “Go help Sanny carry drinks.”

TK heaved a sigh, loud enough to hear even over Cardi B, and shot Nolan one last look before the two of them disappeared into the press of bodies.

“You okay?” G asked him, leaning over the back of the booth. Nolan wouldn’t usually give a shit but he had to force down what was totally _not_ a flinch. He wasn’t scared of G, wouldn’t be even if he weren’t all loved-up and happily married; but yeah, okay, being a half-in-heat half-drunk omega surrounded by a bunch of equally-tipsy alphas was—not recommended.

But “Yeah, fine,” was what Nolan said. “Just tired.”

“Makes sense, eh. Played hard last night.” G slapped him on the shoulder and went to check on the other booth, Oskar and Coots following him. That little part of Nolan that he wouldn’t admit he’d tensed, relaxed.

Across the table, Provy rolled his eyes and drained the last of his beer. “Such a freaking mama hen.”

Provy was a beta, unlike most of the guys who’d been crammed in there with them. Not that G, Sanheim, or Coots had picked up on Nolan’s little—situation. TK had just been being TK.

“Right,” Nolan agreed, maybe half a beat too late, because Provy gave him a weird look. “I think I’m gonna head out.”

The weirdness of the look increased. “Really? Before last call?”

Which, okay, maybe he and Teeks did know how to shut a bar down, but the prickle-itches were intensifying. He was starting to feel warm all over, and the bass of the music seemed to be settling someplace in his stomach, and he needed to get the _fuck_ out of here. Like any responsible omega, Nolan had been tracking his onset progression since puberty, and this one was going fast. _Way_ fucking faster than usual.

“Right,” he repeated nonsensically, dropping a twenty on the table and turning to go; and that was the exact moment when it went to shit.

Some skeezy roid-rage alpha, tall enough that even Nolan couldn’t look straight into his eyes, grabbed his shoulder; curled one side of his lip up in a sneer and growled out, _damn, you’re a big one, looking for someone to take care of you, baby_? in a tone of voice that made Nolan’s skin crawl; and Nolan could take care of himself, okay, was more than capable of decking this asshole, but instead he _froze_, all over panicked while the bottom dropped out of his stomach. Instinct, whatever, kicking in like nothing he’d ever felt before.

But he only felt it for a second, because just as quickly TK was shoving in between them, knocking the strange alpha’s hand off Nolan’s shoulder. He looked _feral_, eyes flashing and teeth bared. TK was at least six inches shorter but that didn’t matter—he was tall enough for his punch to connect, slamming into the dickhead’s nose with a crunch that Nolan could hear, even over the music, or maybe he could feel it instead, in the same low place in his stomach where the bass line was vibrating. (And it did not, absolutely fucking _did not_, make him slick up.)

The stranger came back swinging, but by then the entirety of the Flyers bench had shown up. He didn’t stand a chance: JVR and Gudas were shoving him back, with Coots and Oskar looming behind them; meanwhile Sanny and Ghost had gotten arms around TK. G had his phone out already, managing to simultaneously yell at TK for being _such a little piece of shit_, and start dialing PR.

“Get him the fuck out of here,” G ordered. TK was struggling against the arm Sanheim had wrapped around his chest, eyes still locked on the strange alpha. JVR and Gudas had that situation well under control, though. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Konecny, what the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

“He was going to—can’t you fucking _tell_ Patty’s—” He cut himself off, but not before Nolan felt every eye swing towards him.

Sanheim’s nose twitched, and then TK was going after _him_, and G was yelling at Provy to get Nolan the _fuck_ out of the _fucking_ club. Nolan unfroze when Provy grabbed his wrist, and then the panic hit him, whooshing out from his stomach like a flash fire.

“Holy shit, man,” Provy said, when they were safely in a cab. He’d checked to make sure the driver was a beta before he’d let Nolan get in the back. “What the _fuck_.”

“I didn’t know,” Nolan said, leaning his forehead against the window. The glass was cool; he was too hot all over, and this was happening too fast, and he couldn’t get TK’s face out of his head for some stupid reason: the twist of his lip and the fire in his eyes. “I should have had a few more days.”

The team never discussed his heat cycle using actual words, but they all knew about it. Even if no one had ever been able to smell it on him before, they had to account for it in two games a year. Three if they ever made a run into the playoffs.

“_Fuck_,” Provy repeated, his accent thickening the way it always did when he was upset. “That’s—just _fuck_, dude. That’s never happened before, right? That kind of shit?”

“Never,” Nolan told the window. The vibration of the car made him want to twitch, made him want to curl up around something, or find someone to curl up around _him_. Shit, this was going to be a bad one: he could feel it buzzing around inside him.

Usually he was fine on his own (_not fine_, his stupid omega brain whined at him; he always ached from the inside out, alone in his bed) (but Nolan was very good at ignoring that little voice, and anyway what the fuck was he going to do about it? Bond up?). But if his onset markers were pointing the direction these were, he could call a very discreet, very professional service. His agent had given him the number as soon as he’d made the roster in Philly, in one of the more surreal moments of his professional career.

Normally he wouldn’t mind—it’s not like he never hooked up—but the thought of some unknown alpha touching him right now had him fighting down another shudder.

“You okay?” Provy asked.

“Fine,” Nolan snapped, and they didn’t talk for the rest of the cab ride.

Nolan slammed the door shut behind Provy—he’d walked him all the way up to his door, like a nervous bodyguard—and fastened all the locks. His apartment looked the same it always did, and that was soothing, right? There were the dress shoes he’d kicked off after he got home from the airport last night, and his suit jacket still hanging over the back of the couch; there were the empty containers of takeout sushi he and TK had ordered before they went to meet the rest of the guys. They hadn’t even sat down to eat, standing at the kitchen counter and chopstick-fighting over the last spicy tuna roll. TK had grabbed it and shoved it in his mouth, and Nolan could remember exactly how much he’d wanted to smack the self-satisfied little expression off his face.

He liked that TK had never treated him—differently, or whatever. Nolan could pass as a beta most of the time, but usually alphas still didn’t want to spend too much alone time with him. Or if they did, they started acting like he was breakable, even when they knew he wasn’t; they started acting like they needed to be, whatever, _chivalrous_ or some bullshit like that. Nolan was one hundo percent sure, for example, that Claude Giroux wouldn’t have stolen the last piece of spicy tuna from an omega.

So yeah, he liked that about TK, probably more than he liked getting the last tuna roll.

He shouldn’t be thinking about TK right now. Much less anything that he _liked_ about TK.

Shit fucking goddamn.

He was still hot all over; he could feel sweat prickling along his hairline. He stripped off his shirt and stuck his head in the freezer. The shock of the cold air made him shudder. Not every omega experienced heats as a literal sensation of warmth, but Nolan always had: it reminded him of lying on a beach, one degree too warm to be comfortable, with heat radiating up from the sand one way while the sun pounded down from the other. It made him flush all over, even worse than normal. And there was nothing sexy about turning the color of a tomato, but it’s not like he could do anything about it.

Sometimes Nolan thought it was a good thing he was so good at hockey, because no one was ever going to want him as an omega. He was too big, he didn’t smell right, and a buddy from the Wheat Kings had once called him _the least submissive asshole I’ve ever met_.

Nolan didn’t care about that; he had other shit to worry about. And it’s not like he wanted some alpha to put him on his knees, so four days of his year could suck less.

Except for moments like now, when the heat was starting to get its claws into him enough to make him frantic, but not quite enough to get his brain all the way offline. He didn’t feel turned on yet, but that would be coming soon; for now he was just hot, and prickly, and he couldn’t sit still.

He paced from the freezer over to the window. His apartment had a great view, way better than TK’s downstairs. Usually he thought it was soothing to look out at all the lights—not right now, though, and fuck it if he wasn’t thinking about Travis again.

Fine, okay. Nolan would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. Not like, frequently. But his last heat, back in October: TK had forgotten his stupid yellow sweatshirt on his couch. Just a fucking sweatshirt, but his pheromone-drugged brain had gone and had a fucking _moment_ with it. (Okay, more than one moment.) And he hadn’t quite been able to forget about it.

He wished he had that sweatshirt right now. He wanted to smash his face into it and breathe in lake water and gunpowder and sweat.

Fuck, he was so totally and completely _fucked_, and he needed to get on the phone with the service like, five minutes ago; but the thought of it made him want to gag, or punch something. Maybe it made him want to run the familiar path down three floors of stairs, and pound on TK’s doorway until—

No.

He didn’t fuck with that.

He didn’t fuck with teammates. Oh, fine, it wasn’t unheard of, even after juniors. Crosby had been the trailblazer there too, announcing a bond with Malkin after two seasons. Since then there had been Ovechkin and Backstrom; Jamie Benn locking down Tyler Seguin, probably so he’d stop provoking a fight a week in the locker room; and most recently, the whole blowup over DeBrincat showing up to prospect camp in Chicago bonded to Dylan Strome in Arizona. Nolan was lucky the Flyers had been willing to draft an omega in the first round at all, a year after that mess.

It would be easier if he was bonded, in some ways. Mostly in ways he only thought about four times a year, when he was pacing around his apartment feeling like he wanted to scrape himself raw. It wasn’t like he was Seggy, looking like he looked and apparently smelling like alpha catnip; it certainly wasn’t like he was trying to get himself knocked up, and take the NHL into a brave new world of paternity leave. Not even Sidney Crosby was that hardcore.

But unlike Seguin or Crosby or DeBrincat, or even Nolan’s personal hero Jonathan Toews, being an omega just didn’t affect him that much. He knew that was a privileged position, to not walk into a room and have every alpha assess his scent; it had always been easy enough for the team to forget he was an omega at all, at least once they’d been skating together long enough to realize how thoroughly unfuckable he was. So other than the inevitable chirps, and G’s dad-vibe chivalry, and mostly limiting his good buddies to the beta guys, it didn’t matter all that much in Nolan’s life. Girls and betas both liked him fine, and he was equal opportunity as far as that went.

But that didn’t keep it from mattering a fuck of a lot right now.

His phone dinged at him, the noise almost enough to make him jump. He hated how twitchy he got, like every nerve in his body was oversensitive and desperate for stimulation. He switched it to vibrate before he looked at the screen.

It was TK. _hey buddy idk if this is weird, I know u got your thing rn but please let me know you’re ok_.

_Fine_, Nolan sent back. His fucking omega brain like—preened, all slinky and pleased that an alpha was thinking about him. Even if it was an alpha who used _u_ in text messages, unless it was to say _your_ or _you’re_ because _fuck you, Patty, I know grammar, okay_.

Three little dots popped up. Disappeared. Popped up again. Nolan could imagine TK on his phone, forehead wrinkled under his backwards snapback, sucking his lower lip into his mouth like he always did when he was worried about something. Thinking about his stupid, uneven mouth made Nolan go a degree hotter all over, which was just heat hormone bullshit, but wasn’t like he could decide to not feel it.

That was one of the things he hated the most about going into heat, even one of the regular, predictable ones: feeling out of control in his own body, like he was a helpless passenger getting dragged along by his, whatever, fucking bullshit biology.

His phone vibrated in his hand, and the rasp of it against his fingers _was_ enough to make him shiver, this time. 

_thank fucking god I was so worried_.

And then a second later, _sorry if I made shit weird, I know u can handle urself but I just couldn’t_, sent unfinished like he was still trying to collect his thoughts: also a classic TK text move. He was probably leaning over his kitchen island with his phone, and all the lines of muscle would be standing out along his arms, and—

No. Fucking _no_. He’d sworn to himself that the sweatshirt thing had been a one-off. He’d washed it four times before he’d given it back, pretended he’d lost it under his car seat and hadn’t acknowledged feeling one single goddamn thing when Teeks had taken it and said, _now it smells like you_.

_I just couldn’t stand seeing his hands on you_, is what he read on the screen of his phone.

And oh, fuck, he was doing this, wasn’t he? Thumbing over to his contacts, and hitting his most recent call.

It was TK; it was always fucking TK.

He answered immediately. “I know, I’m so fucking sorry, I know you hate that shit and it was a fucked-up thing to say and I—”

Nolan cut him off. “Get up here.”

There was a clatter, like TK had dropped his phone, then picked it back up. So much for his good hands, fucking Christ, but hearing his voice at all had the instincts in the back of Nolan’s head almost—purring. It turned him on, which was a thing Nolan was going to have to live with the rest of his life: that hearing Travis Konecny stammer out an apology and drop his phone was enough to make him slick up.

It was _fine_, okay. The way this was going, _anything_ would be enough to get him turned on: the sofa (other late nights: TK falling asleep with his head leaned back and his mouth open, one foot stuck under Nolan’s thigh); the kitchen counter (fighting over takeout orders and trying not to crack up at TK’s terrible jokes, because he didn’t want to see the self-satisfied little smirk he always got when he made Nolan laugh); the fucking _washing machine_ (one takeout fight had resulted in TK getting egg drop soup spilled all over him—which was _not_ Nolan’s fault, and if TK said anything different he was _delusional_—so he’d gone over to the laundry closet and stripped; Nolan’s tongue had gone all thick in his mouth, and he saw TK naked basically every day but there had been something different about watching the pull of muscles in his back, alone behind a locked door) (he’d put on Nolan’s clothes, afterward, a faded Wheat Kings t-shirt and track pants rolled up at the cuff, and Nolan had absolutely not thought about biting the place where the too-big shirt gaped over his collarbone).

“Are you—what do you need,” TK was saying over the phone.

“Just get up here.”

“Okay. Yeah. I mean, yes.”

“You’re such a fucking spazz,” Nolan told him, but TK must have already hung up.

A few minutes later, he knocked on the door. Nolan checked the peephole anyway. It’s not like he scented up enough that some strange alpha was going to come try to knock his door down, but they drilled it into them in omega ed and okay, fine, maybe he was still a little jumpy from the stranger at the club, and all of the—things surging around inside his lower belly.

This was a huge fucking mistake. Nolan could know that, intellectually, but his body seemed to be moving without his conscious participation as he unlocked the door and swung it open.

“You have a key, dumbass,” he said, and okay, he still sounded like himself. Somehow; he didn’t feel like it at all.

TK made a choking noise, eyes stuck somewhere around Nolan’s shoulders. He realized, belatedly, that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that he was already red all over. It probably wasn’t a good luck. The omega in the back of his head cringed back at that, wanted to bare its throat and beg for approval. TK was _right there_, and his scent was washing over Nolan in waves, ozone off lake water and the lingering burn in the back of his nose after he lifted a shotgun to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.

“I uh,” TK started. Swallowed. Started again, “I didn’t want to—surprise you.”

“I asked you to come upstairs. How the fuck were you going to surprise me.”

“I don’t know. Pats, you…” TK shook his head, hard enough that he had to resettle his snapback over his hair. He always had to be doing something with his hands. “Look, I don’t know if—buddy. What do you need?” He sounded desperate. “I can go get you whatever. I’ll do literally whatever you need me to do. But I don’t know if I can like. Be here. Right now.”

“Oh,” said Nolan. He felt TK’s words hit, check him straight into the boards; and he didn’t know if it was him or his omega cowering this time, so probably it was both. He backed up, reaching for the edge of the door.

“_No_,” TK said, and Nolan froze. “Not like—whatever you think I just said.” He scrubbed at his face. “Fuck, I can’t think. Patty. You’re killing me. Whatever you want me to do, you gotta tell me, like right now, or I’m going to—” He stopped again, shook his head again. “You just have no fucking idea what you’re doing to me right now.”

“I’m not doing anything.” What he wanted to do was to slam the door in TK’s face and scream. Why had his addled fucking brain thought dragging TK up here was a good idea, again? Because his omega liked how his _dirty clothes_ smelled? TK wasn’t interested in him—TK fucked girls, exclusively, and Nolan barely registered as an omega anyway. “Forget it, okay. Tonight’s been a total shitshow.”

His omega wanted him to drop to the ground and beg TK to stay. Nolan locked his knees. He hated that shit, when he wasn’t out of his mind in heat; but now he was thinking about getting on his knees, pressing his face into the crease of TK’s hip and breathing him in.

Apparently he was far enough along that thinking about it was enough to make him go slick again. He wanted to die, like actually die, go drown himself in his bathtub or throw himself out a window. It was bad enough that he’d seen or read something into the scene at the club, TK’s text, that hadn’t been there; it was worse that he was standing here, in his doorway, watching TK’s nostrils flare as he realized what Nolan’s body was doing.

“Oh, _fuck_.” TK sounded as if he was in pain.

Maybe death was too good for Nolan. Alphas had their own instinctual shit to deal with, and they were _friends_, damn it. He should never have picked up his phone. How the fuck did he think this was going to end, anyway? (His omega had some ideas.) (Nolan didn’t want to know.) “Sorry,” he said, backing up farther.

TK took a step forward, like he couldn’t help it. “Don’t apologize. Oh, fucking god_damn_, Patty. I don’t ever want to hear you apologize to me.”

That was a total lie, but it didn’t matter because TK was close, all of a sudden: close enough that Nolan felt like he was drowning, and close enough that he could tell TK was so tense he was shaking. Nolan’s omega wanted to make a noise, some needy little thing—his alpha wasn’t happy, and he wanted to make it better. He trapped it behind his teeth. TK was looking up at him, panting shallowly through his mouth.

Nolan didn’t want to smell him, but he couldn’t help it, this close.

It was too fucking much.

He tipped his throat back before he could stop himself. TK made a gut-punched noise and then he was slamming Nolan back from the door, not stopping until his shoulders hit the wall, and he _bit_. Hard enough to leave a mark. He moaned against Nolan’s throat and Nolan felt it in every cell of his body.

“I don’t know if I can stop,” he said into Nolan’s skin. TK’s hands were running up and down his sides, restless and hot against his skin. Nolan wanted to melt. 

“I didn’t tell you to come up here so you could _stop_.”

“But you don’t,” TK swallowed; his hips were twitching, like he was trying to stop himself from thrusting forward, and Nolan could feel how hard he was (but that was biology, Nolan reminded himself; any alpha would be), “you don’t want me. Not like that.”

That was a fucking stupid thing to say, and Nolan told him so. TK had gotten one hand in his hair, and was tightening and releasing his grip in a way that made Nolan’s hips jerk. He was leaking; he could feel it trickling down his leg. They’d barely done anything. It was embarrassing enough that he felt himself flushing harder.

“Fuck, Pats,” TK was telling his neck, in between sucking kisses. “You look so good and fuck, I can smell your—” He cut himself off again, with a full-body shudder that drove their hips together harder. Nolan ground against him. He could feel his inner muscles clenching, timing themselves to the rhythm of TK’s hand in his hair. He was so desperate; he felt like he was on fire with need, like he could come in his jeans right now, from this.

He scrabbled at the hem of TK’s shirt. Yanked it up to his shoulders, pulled it off, knocked his stupid sheep snapback to the floor. And that was better, being skin to skin with TK’s scent intensifying around him. It had a musky note now, underlaying the gunpowder, and it should have been unfamiliar but it wasn’t; it just wasn’t.

“Fuck, _wait_.” TK stumbled back, all the way to the door. Nolan wanted to scream; he was cold all over without him, and of course, of fucking _course_, TK wanted to stop this. _He_ wasn’t out of his mind with heat.

TK covered his face with his hands, like he didn’t even want to look at Nolan. His hair was all smashed down from his hat and Nolan hated his stupid tan and absolutely everything about him. “Bud. Patty. _Nolan_.”

TK never used his name. “_What_,” Nolan snapped.

“This is—” He sucked in a breath. Shuddered. Shook his head again, like a dog trying to shake off water. “Could you please. Go over there. I can’t think with you looking like that.”

Which is how Nolan ended up sitting on his couch, trying not to come out of his skin while Travis paced by the window. It wasn’t an unusual position for them; would have been normal, any other night. Sometimes TK had too much energy to sit through a whole movie, so he ended up over at the window instead, watching in the reflection of the glass and heckling periodically to make sure Nolan hadn’t fallen asleep. But nothing was the same tonight.

Nolan didn’t know why he wouldn’t just _leave_. Said that.

“Do you want me to?” TK asked the glass.

“No.” Nolan’s omega was horrified at the idea. He clenched his hands on the edge of the seat cushion, so he wouldn’t get up and like, crawl over and go belly-up. It was hard to focus on anything other than the surges of heat rising through him. He wanted to give up. Scream. Cry. Beg until Travis gave him what he wanted.

TK’s shoulders shuddered, like Nolan’s _no_ had hit him physically. “Okay. You have to know—” He trailed off.

“Would you _finish a fucking sentence_.” Nolan’s omega was also horrified at the tone in his voice; didn’t want him to talk to his alpha like that. (But TK wasn’t his alpha, and Nolan wasn’t his omega.)

“_I’m trying_,” TK shot back, spinning around. His chest was heaving, but okay, that felt more normal (nothing felt normal): shouting at each other from across Nolan’s living room, about Halo or takeout or the best lures for catching steelhead trout. “But you’re just, over there, smelling like fucking _everything_, and I want you _so_ goddamn bad, Patty. I’ve wanted you _forever_. I get that you don’t want me like that and it’s not a, a problem or whatever. Except now you’re calling me when you’re, fuck, you’re _in heat_! But I don’t know if it’s because you _really_ want me, or because I’m like, _available_, just like whoever the fuck you handled your heat last spring. And I want to be chill about it but _fuck_! I _can’t_ be, okay? I can’t do this once and then go back to how things were if you’re just going to—”

He cut himself off again. Nolan couldn’t—Nolan just couldn’t. Everything was realigning itself, like the time he’d dislocated his shoulder fucking around on the pond behind his house in Winnipeg, and the ER doctor had slotted it right back into place. Pain, and a grinding snap of realignment.

What he said was, “Fine.”

“_Fine_?” TK yelled, like he was expecting a fight that hadn’t come. Then, “Wait, what?”

“You heard what I said.” He dug his fingernails into the cushion. He was probably leaving a wet spot on the upholstery—his omega had really liked that little speech. Like, _really_ liked. Nolan hadn’t minded it, either, if he was being honest with himself; and if he couldn’t be honest with himself about what he wanted, right now, when he could literally feel the bite mark on his throat throbbing in time with his heartbeat, when the fuck was he ever going to be?

He’d never fucked a teammate before. But then he’d never had—fuck, he couldn’t believe he was even about to think this in relation to fucking _Travis Konecny_, with his bad facial hair and shitty taste in beer and pathological inability to sit still unless he had a fishing pole in his hand (and also, his stupid uneven smile and the way his forehead wrinkled up when he was concentrating, and the specific place along the outside of his collarbone where water collected after he showered; and maybe it meant something that Nolan knew exactly where that was)—he’d never had someone like TK on his team before. He’d never had someone like TK before in his _life_ before.

He thought TK must be reading something on his face, or in his scent; maybe his self-restraint had finally given out, because he was across the living room in a second, with his teeth back in the mark on Nolan’s throat.

Nolan shuddered. He could feel his body going all—pliant, like every inch of it wanted whatever Travis was going to give him. In retaliation he got his fingernails into the skin on TK’s back. TK’s whole body jerked, and he bit down harder; then he was licking up Nolan’s neck, and finally, finally (_finally_? that was his thought?) they were kissing.

TK tasted like cheap beer and the purple Vitamin Water he must have chugged in his apartment, and it shouldn’t have been hot but it was. He kissed like he was drunk on it, like he could do it forever. TK got one hand in Nolan’s hair while the other one roamed over his chest, thumbing at a nipple and making Nolan’s entire body seize up. He could feel his insides pulsing again, only this time he felt the emptiness like a physical pain.

Nolan couldn’t bite back a whine.

“Fuck, baby,” and Nolan should hate that, he should definitely hate that (he didn’t), “can I—”

“Yes.” Nolan cut him off. He didn’t care what he was agreeing to; he was desperate, hot all over and getting hotter, with TK’s skin against him and the way he smelled at the hinge of his jaw, at the place where his neck met his shoulder. It was Nolan’s turn to bite, and maybe he shouldn’t—he never would have let himself bite any of the other alphas who he’d let fuck him—but he wanted to. From the gut-punched noise TK made, the way his hand went tight in Nolan’s hair to hold him in place, he didn’t mind.

TK was tugging at his belt one-handed, dropping it to the floor with a clatter, then fumbling at the buttons on Nolan’s jeans. “Why the hell,” he moaned, “are your pants always so _fucking_ tight.”

“You like it,” Nolan guessed, into the skin of his shoulder.

“Not right now,” TK bitched, which felt normal, again, even with everything going so fucking crazy. Nolan huffed out a laugh, almost forgetting to be self-conscious when TK finished stripping his jeans off and could see how much he’d been leaking into his underwear. From like, nothing. He didn’t slick up much unless he was in heat, but then the goddamned floodgates opened.

TK skated his fingers along the elastic of Nolan’s underwear, light enough to make him shiver all over, then pressed his hand over the bulge of his erection. Nolan moaned and pushed up into his hand; TK made an echoing noise and kissed him again, palming him through his underwear. Nolan could come from that, probably, TK’s tongue fucking into his mouth and the pressure of his hand and the way his smell was wrapped all around him. 

He was so empty, though, body clenching on nothing. He was making that needy little whine again, right into TK’s mouth; felt the way it made TK’s hips jerk and his teeth tighten on Nolan’s lower lip. He yanked at Nolan’s underwear, only getting it halfway off before he gave up. Nolan couldn’t begin to care, because TK was finally touching him, all the way: calluses and the heat of his hand burning against Nolan’s skin, over his balls, already drawn up tight and desperate; then, almost tentatively, slipping behind to feel how soaking wet he was, and—

Stopping.

Nolan wanted to scream. His omega wanted to go belly-up again, in confusion and shame. Yeah, okay, maybe Nolan felt that way, too. But he was so out of his mind fucked-up that all he could do was lay there, eyes squeezed shut, and try not to move or think or exist.

“Nolan,” TK said. “_Baby_.” He was moving again, hands on Nolan’s hips to shove him onto his stomach. His thumbs pressed onto Nolan’s rim, opening him up while he squeezed his ass. That was enough to make Nolan clench and drip. TK said _oh fuck_ in a low, punched-out voice Nolan had never heard before, and then his tongue was driving inside him.

Nolan’s whole body seized, and he came so hard the world went white.

When he came to again, he felt like it had barely taken the edge off; maybe because the heat really had him now, pulsing out from his ass and keeping his dick stiff, or maybe because TK was still behind him, moaning while he sucked up Nolan’s slick and saying shit like _the way you taste, baby_, and _you’re killing me, Nolan_, and _just wait, I’m going to fuck you up so good_, his voice vibrating against Nolan’s soaking, empty hole.

“I’m still waiting,” Nolan said. He wanted TK’s tongue and his fingers and his knot and—everything, all at once.

“You’re so fucking bossy,” TK told him. He sounded pleased about it, even if he gave Nolan a stinging bite, right where the curve of his ass met his inner thigh. Nolan twitched and clenched, and TK growled and bit him again. But he plunged two fingers in, this time, and it felt so good and so far away from enough that it had Nolan whining again. He pushed his hips back, riding TK’s fingers until he shoved in a third and twisted, pulling him open so he could get his tongue inside, too. Nolan’s body was pulsing around TK’s fingers, and he had to be able to feel it, from the way he was swearing and moaning, dragging at Nolan’s swollen rim to give his tongue more room.

Of course TK was loud in bed (or in Nolan’s living room), and messy, mouth open and sloppy and not seeming to care at all since he had finally found Nolan’s prostate. And Nolan couldn’t think, couldn’t open his eyes, could only bite down on his forearm and shudder through it when TK pressed down and made him come again, so hard it left his balls aching.

The second orgasm gave him some breathing room, at least. He shoved TK’s head out from between his legs and rolled over onto his back, wincing when his skin hit the wet patch. TK didn’t go far, just made a pleased little _mmm_ and started licking at the mess of come and slick that had trickled down the crease of his hip. Nolan dropped one arm over his eyes and tried to ignore the way his other hand had tangled itself in TK’s hair. He didn’t know if he wanted to pull him off or keep him right where he was.

“Fuck, you’re still hard,” TK said after a minute, like this was a surprise.

“I’m in heat, you dumbass.” He thumped TK’s bare shoulder with his heel. He was turned on, obviously, but his head was clear for now—whether it was because he’d already come twice, or because his omega was basking in his alpha’s attention, he didn’t know (and didn’t really want to know).

“I know, dumbass,” TK fired back, then twitched. “Um, sorry. I don’t know if I should be more, like, respectful. My mom would kill me if she knew I just said that to an omega.”

Nolan snorted and yanked on his hair. “You’ve called me a dumbass before, bud. And I don’t want to hear about your mom right now.”

TK followed the pressure of his hand up Nolan’s torso, pausing to suck on his nipples and then the bite mark on his neck. Nolan tipped his head back and sighed into it, scratching his fingers against TK’s scalp because he knew how much TK liked head rubs. (There was another thing he already knew about TK, that he probably shouldn’t.)

TK still had his pants on, somehow. The fabric felt all scratchy and rough against his over-sensitized skin. He was kind of amazed that TK hadn’t gotten his dick out yet.

“Why are you still wearing pants,” Nolan asked, not liking the needy note he heard in his voice but simultaneously not caring that much, either. He was hard, and TK’s mouth felt _so_ fucking good on his neck, but it wasn’t like he needed to get off right this second. 

“Oh. I, uh.” He stopped, and apparently they were back on _that_ bullshit. Nolan smacked his shoulder.

“What, asshole.”

TK mumbled something into his shoulder. Nolan tightened his hand in his hair, and yanked him up until they were nose to nose. TK scrunched up his stupid face, going a little cross-eyed from trying to focus; and it was such a profoundly Teeks expression that Nolan had to kiss it. TK tried to talk into his mouth, though, because he was incapable of shutting up outside of the exact moments when Nolan wanted him to be talking.

“I _said_,” he mumbled, when Nolan had pried him off again and glared up at him for a while. “I kind of, whatever. Didn’t want to get too into it and, you know.”

Nolan thunked his head back onto the arm of the couch. “What? Fuck me?”

TK made a face. “Yeah?”

Nolan would maybe feel bad, except that this was just such a ridiculous situation. So all he said was, “_Travis_.”

“Shut up,” TK moaned, dropping his head back into Nolan’s neck. “I didn’t bring any condoms with me, okay? And I know you’re not on anything to keep you from—you know, because you said the drugs give you those migraines. I didn’t want to take a chance on, whatever, going all crazy. Because I’ve never done this before, and I didn’t totally know how I was going to…react.”

Nolan blinked up at the ceiling. That was a lot to unpack. “What I’m hearing,” he said, slowly, “is that an omega you wanted to fuck called you up to his apartment, and you knew he was in heat, and _you didn’t bring any condoms_?”

“Fuck you, I didn’t want to like, presume!” TK was kind of yelling now, and also kind of laughing, sitting himself back on Nolan’s lap. His lips were red and swollen and he had a stripe of Nolan’s slick drying on his cheek, and—yeah. Maybe Nolan wasn’t feeling quite so chill anymore. “But don’t worry, I came in my pants like a fourteen-year-old while I was eating you out.”

Nolan’s dick twitched and he found his hands on TK’s hips, thumbs rubbing against the points of his hipbones. He liked TK’s body, okay. He wasn’t the most cut guy on the team, but he was stronger than he looked. Solid, even in March with his summer weight long gone. Nolan licked his lips, feeling the heat start to roll around in his lower belly again. TK felt it or smelled it, because he groaned and leaned back down to kiss him again. Nolan wrapped a leg around his waist and let himself grind up against him, the scratch of his jeans enough to keep him grounded; wanted to purr at the way TK’s hips stuttered, the way he could feel him stiffening back up.

“Fuck,” TK moaned, breath hot against Nolan’s jaw. “I don’t know how I’m ready to go again.”

Right. Because he’d never fucked an omega in heat before, and it was one thing to hear about it in alpha ed (or like every porno ever made), but it was another thing to actually experience it: so there was the second thing Nolan had meant to unpack. He shoved at TK’s shoulder until he backed off again, making a displeased noise that did not make Nolan squirm and present his neck, except that it did. “You haven’t done this before.”

TK was busy with his neck again. Fucking alphas and their oral fixations. Not that Nolan wanted to complain, exactly. He shouldn’t like it—had never liked it from the handful of alphas he’d been with before—but there was something about walking around with TK’s mark on him that settled deep in his stomach. “I’m not a virgin,” he was saying, in between sucking bites.

“No shit.” Nolan had watched him break up with his girlfriend from Ottawa last season, then fuck a series of tiny blondes with big tits until he ran out of steam sometime in December. Which—huh. Was maybe around the time the two of them had started spending all their free time together. “But you’ve never done—this. A heat. Knotting.”

“Or an omega,” he mumbled, sounding displeased again. “It’s not like I don’t like girls. And none of them ever smelled right, before.”

“Not even Tyler Seguin?” Nolan hadn’t meant to ask that; definitely hadn’t meant it to come out all insecure. So fine, maybe he had a little bit of a thing about Segs. He was every single thing Nolan was not: blatantly an omega, hot as a bonfire, smelling some kind of fucking way, and lighting up the league anyway. Nolan didn’t want to be Tyler Seguin—god, _there_ was a nightmare—but he couldn’t deny that sometimes he was kind of jealous of him, anyway.

“Ugh, no. He smells all—accessible and it’s just like, an entire cloud around him. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he backtracked, the polite farm boy from Clachan, Ontario resurfacing. “Just not like, a thing that I’m into. It’s toned way down since he and Big Benn shacked up, thank God.”

“The whole league is probably thankful. Or totally bummed about it.” Alphas made up about ten percent of the male population in North America, but were way overrepresented in professional sports thanks to all of that competitiveness and physical aggression.

“Put me in the thankful column.” TK nipped at his earlobe. “I like your smell better, anyway. You’re like—snow. And open space. It reminds me of winter back home, the first real big snowstorm when everything is all quiet and covered up in white. And I like that it’s not just—out there. I liked to think,” he paused, nosed into Nolan’s sweaty hair to suck in a lungful of his scent, “that it could be. Maybe. Just for me.”

Nolan turned his head to catch at his lips, making a raw, unrecognizable noise in the back of his throat while TK licked into his mouth. That was all it took for the want to fire back up inside of him, until he was scratching at the muscles in TK’s back and arching up into him. He was so empty it hurt, and fingers weren’t going to do it this time. “Get a fucking condom,” he panted.

“Fuck, I can’t leave you like this.” TK was wild-eyed and rock hard. Nolan doubted he looked any better.

“This is _your_ fucking fault!” It was Nolan’s turn to be halfway yelling. This fucking guy, seriously? _This_ was who he wanted? He could have had a handsome, experienced alpha from the service (the thought was enough to make him throw up, now that he had Travis’s scent all over him and his mark on his neck), but he’d picked _Teeks_? (TK picked _him_, his omega piped up. TK had wanted him _forever_. TK just said his smell was _perfect_.)

“Don’t you have any? I know you hook up, because sometimes I smell it on you and I want to kill them,” and he trailed off again, like maybe he hadn’t meant to admit that, because he knew how much Nolan hated possessive alpha bullshit. Right now he was beyond caring.

“I don’t have anything that’s going to fit you.” Nolan was sized for his frame, as big as any beta, but he wasn’t laying down alpha pipe. And it wasn’t like he could spend two years in a locker room with TK and avoid seeing what he was swinging.

TK growled and thrust his hips, and it went a little hazy after that—Nolan’s omega maybe picked up the reins, made him cling onto TK’s shoulders and whimper and try to rub his slick all over his pants, until TK was swearing and shoving three fingers back inside him with his teeth dug into his neck. Nolan’s dick was rubbing against the ridges of TK’s abs, slippery with pre-come, but this time it wasn’t enough: his body knew what it wanted.

He wanted to beg but he didn’t. TK was showing some fucking admirable restraint for an alpha experiencing a heat for the first time, at least according to what omega ed had to say on the subject. But Nolan wasn’t _stupid_. Not even his thirsty-as-fuck omega was ready to beg TK to put a baby in him. (Yet.) (…Fuck.)

“Go _now_,” he said instead, not able to keep the whine out of his voice.

“Anything, baby.”

“Then _go_!” Nolan shoved at his shoulder and managed not to whimper when TK staggered back up to his feet, because suddenly they weren’t touching everywhere. He looked—god, he looked _wrecked_, tenting up his pants, tooth marks on his shoulder and scratches down his sides, and Nolan’s slick all over his hand.

Nobody could look at him and not know exactly what they were doing; nobody could smell him and not know exactly who he’d been doing it with.

Nolan and his omega both liked that.

“Fuck, okay, I’m going.” Travis ripped his eyes away from Nolan on the couch, and halfway sprinted to the door. He grabbed one of Nolan’s hoodies off the back of the door but didn’t stop to put on shoes, even if he did carefully lock everything back up once he’d shut the door behind him.

Nolan shut his eyes and tried to breathe through it. After a minute he was collected enough to wobble over to the kitchen and chug a glass of water. The clock on the stove said it was either way too late, or way too early—and shit, G would have put the word out that Nolan was occupied, but TK was definitely distractible enough and hated phones enough that he would no-show at morning skate.

Nolan winced. He could want everyone in Philadelphia to know who made the mark on his neck, and also not want to have to explain to an NHL captain that his liney was going MIA to knot up his second-line center. Especially not with how protective and (to be honest) dad-like he got.

His omega wanted to let his alpha take care of it (now that he apparently had one), but Nolan hadn’t gotten to where he was by letting himself get away with shit like that. He picked up his phone and shot off a quick text to G, fully intending to turn it off before he had a chance to respond, but G must have still been awake because he answered immediately. _Tell TK to do his job better if you have time to be texting_, with a couple of fireworks emojis, because Claude Giroux loved a goddamned emoji.

And that was now a thing that had happened in Nolan’s life.

He dropped his phone back onto the counter before he headed for his bedroom. It was taking TK a pretty long time, actually; long enough for Nolan to strip the comforter off his bed so it wouldn’t get ruined and finish the water bottle he’d left on his nightstand. He always got so damned dehydrated when he was in heat, from all the. Well. All the slick and the come.

Thinking that made him think about TK licking at the mess on his stomach, and whatever chill he’d manifested on the couch was gone. TK could catch the fuck up whenever he got back.

So Nolan was spread out on his navy blue sheets, two fingers inside and the other hand on his dick and trying not to scream because _Travis wasn’t there_, when he heard the key in the lock and TK come charging back in. And fuck Travis, for real, for leaving him like this: Nolan let himself get loud for a second, so he could hear TK’s curses pick up in intensity while he tried to get the door locked again.

“Oh fucking shit goddamn,” was what he went with, when he finally got to the bedroom door. “_Baby_.”

“You took too long,” Nolan told him, curling his fingers and watching TK’s eyes go hazy.

“I—fuck.” TK threw a CVS bag onto the bed and dropped Nolan’s hoodie on the floor. Nolan’s eyes followed his hands as they went to his belt, fumbling it undone and then scrambling to unbutton his jeans. “I only had like, two condoms, so I had to _run_ to the _fucking_ store.”

It was, honestly, pretty comical—he was _still barefoot_ for fuck’s sake, and they lived in _Philly_, and he was going to get street germs on the sheets—and Nolan was going to give him shit for it later; except right now Travis was kicking off his pants, still staring at how Nolan’s hand was moving like he was mesmerized.

“Get down here.” He sounded about as desperate as he felt, looking at Travis’s alpha cock while his body was trying to make do with his fingers. Travis smelled amazing, gunpowder over freshwater and the musk of his arousal, and he was all the way over _there_ when Nolan needed him _here_. He said that out loud, then Travis was in motion, covering him in hot skin and a hotter mouth, taking a possessive grip on Nolan’s dick and biting at his nipples while fumbling one-handed for a condom.

Nolan wasn’t sure if they were ever going to fuck or if he was going to be empty and dying for it forever. He was making all kinds of noises, frantic ones while TK swore at the plastic wrap around the box. But that had Nolan laughing again, borderline hysterical because he was so hot for it that he was out of his goddamned mind, but this was _exactly_ the kind of bullshit he would have imagined, if he’d ever let himself really imagine fucking Teeks.

Or Teeks fucking him, because suddenly, it was about to happen. He could smell it; feel it when Travis kissed him, open-mouthed and messy, calling him _baby_ and telling him he was perfect while he pinned his wrists to the pillow.

“Are you ready?” Travis asked.

“Are _you_?” Nolan asked him back, because, okay, he’d done this before. Maybe not with someone he cared about; maybe not with someone like TK, who made him laugh and failed at setting up the Xbox on the road and bitched about the Brussels sprouts in his crisper drawer, and who had also, okay, been his rock since he’d made the roster. Who was looking down into his eyes like—fuck, like he was seeing everything he’d ever wanted.

“I hope so,” he answered. “I want to be good for you, baby.” He pushed a piece of Nolan’s hair off his forehead, tucking it behind his ear and running his thumb along his cheekbone; gently, so fucking gently. Nolan should have been screaming at him to get on with it, because he was so empty it _hurt_, but even his omega agreed that this was more important.

“You will be,” Nolan told him.

They were still kissing—gentle, almost careful, lips and tongues—when he slid inside. Nolan could feel every inch of him, and he exhaled, letting his head fall back while his body pulled Travis all the way in. Travis was swearing quietly into his neck, lips moving over the mark as his hips started to roll. It wasn’t the best angle, but Nolan didn’t care, just wrapped his leg around Travis’s waist and kissed his hair, his ear, whatever he could reach, letting his hands roam up and down the broad muscles in his back.

Time went a little sideways, maybe, which Nolan was used to when he was in heat but—not like this. It was just outside his realm of understanding, like something in his chest had cracked open and Travis was pouring in to fill it up. He didn’t even care about getting off; or he did, of course he did, with the way Travis was filling him from the inside out, cool water washing away the burn. But it wasn’t the most important thing that needed to happen right now.

Travis’s hand was back on his dick, pulling it in time with his thrusts. He was speeding up like he couldn’t help himself, saying all kinds of soft shit, calling Nolan _gorgeous_ and _sweetheart_ and _so perfect for me, baby, I knew you would be but I didn’t know it could feel like this_.

“I didn’t, either,” Nolan said; then he was coming from the inside, white hot cold as his body rippled around Travis’s cock.

Travis groaned, and came in a surge that had Nolan’s headboard rattling against the wall. Nolan hated the condom in that second—he wanted to feel the heat of Travis’s come filling him up, wanted to taste it mixing with the slick dripping down from where they were joined together.

“Oh, _fuck_.” Travis’s hips were still twitching through the aftershocks. “Is that—”

Nolan pulled Travis back into his neck. He was practically shaking as he bit down, hard enough to make Nolan yelp and clench around his swelling knot. It felt hot, and huge, and every time Travis’s hips shifted it pressed on his prostate.

Then it was Nolan’s turn to shake as he came again, Travis’s knot wringing it out of him in waves, clawing at Travis’s shoulders and sucking on his tongue. His body was screaming for it again, desperate and needy, everything he hated about being in heat all at once, except he didn’t hate it this time. He should have been ashamed at the sounds he was making, the things he was begging Travis to do to him, but he wasn’t. He was soaking wet; he could feel his heartbeat thudding in the bitemark on his throat; he was coming untouched on his alpha’s knot, so hard he was almost crying.

Travis pinned his wrists and fucked him through it, headboard hitting the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the drywall.

He didn’t know how long they kept going, but Travis was still there when he came down from it. His hip flexors were burning and Travis still had him knotted up, mumbling nonsense into his neck and heavy across his chest.

“Ow,” he said. His voice was all raspy, even lower than usual.

Travis propped himself up on an elbow, dropped a kiss on the end of his nose. “Back with me, bud?”

“You think?” Nolan sniped. He waved a hand to indicate their whole set-up, stuck together with four kinds of body fluid and Travis’s knot. Which was—big. Really fucking big. Nolan was done for now, could not come again at the moment if his life depended on it, but it turned out that he could still drip a little more slick.

“Yeah, you are.” Travis grinned at him, the same stupid smile Nolan was used to seeing when Travis succeeded in making him laugh at one of his awful jokes. “There’s that bitchy Patty face I love to see.”

“God, fuck you.”

“Think I just did, bud.”

Nolan groaned and slapped his ass, which made Travis twitch and Nolan kind of—yip at the pressure. Nothing about being in heat was dignified, but that noise was maybe the most undignified thing Nolan had done tonight. Travis was laughing down at him and Nolan hated him, he really did. But when he told Travis that, it just made him laugh harder.

When Travis’s knot had finally gone down—which, goddamn, that thing had really _lasted_—they staggered into the shower together. It was like four in the morning, some absurd time, and Travis looked dead on his feet. Nolan bullied him into changing the sheets anyway while he went to make a couple of smoothies. (He put extra spinach in Travis’s, just to be a dick.) (Also because the team nutritionist had been getting after him about his calcium intake.)

Travis was three quarters of the way asleep by the time Nolan got back to bed, curled up around Nolan’s favorite pillow with one eye approximately one quarter of the way open.

“Wake up, asshole.” He climbed into bed and kicked his calf for good measure. “Drink this. You’ve gotta keep your strength up.”

Travis made a whole production out of it, yawning loud enough to crack his jaw and making the unhappy noises he used to make when Nolan was kicking him out after a marathon video game session. (Nolan had stopped bothering some time in November.) (Whatever, he was living on his own for the first time and sometimes it got a little lonely, okay, and it’s not like he’d been worried that big bad TK was going to jump him or anything.)

TK was evidently too tired to bitch about the spinach, which meant he was about one degree off catatonic. Nolan’s omega was a little smug about it—he’d put his alpha through his paces, okay. (And he’d done—really well.)

“Will you please let me sleep now,” TK mumbled into the dregs in his glass.

“I dunno, bud,” Nolan said, just to fuck with him. “I think I’m ready to go again.”

TK moaned. Not a sexy moan: it was the exact sound he produced when they got bag-skated. Nolan couldn’t contain a snort of amusement as he switched off the light and dragged them both under the covers. Travis octopused onto him immediately. “But like, really,” he said into Nolan’s shoulder, all muffled against his skin. “When do I need to be awake again.”

“I’ll let you know.” He sritched his fingers against Travis’s scalp. Travis made a pleased little hum, and dropped off immediately. Nolan should have been uncomfortable, between the heat still fizzing around his nervous system and Travis’s deadweight cutting off the circulation in his arm, but instead he was all—relaxed. 

Cozy.

Fucking, whatever the fuck, this was all so profoundly unexpected (except was it, really?) and also—perfect.

(Nolan would not admit that under threat of torture.)

So he kissed Travis’s hair; followed him into sleep; and didn’t admit to one single thing.

The next morning, Nolan was still in heat. He woke up first, which wasn’t surprising. Unless it involved hunting or fishing TK would prefer not to fuck with mornings. What was slightly more surprising was that he caught himself just kind of—watching Travis sleep. He’d seen Travis asleep two hundred times: on the plane with an eye mask, sacked out on his couch after Zombies.

He looked good like this, okay, his tan all golden against the dark blue sheets and hair falling across his forehead. He was so still, mouth relaxed and breathing quiet and even. Nolan wasn’t even annoyed that he still had ahold of the best pillow, which didn’t say anything good about his mental state.

Nolan could feel a new cycle starting to fire up in his belly, but he still had some space from it. Without letting himself think about it too much, he slipped under the sheets and nosed his way into Travis’s hip. Because fuck it, he wanted to. Travis’s scent hit him like a punch, concentrated from sleep and being trapped under the sheets. Nolan’s body kicked up a notch, quivery and anticipatory.

Just smelling Travis was enough to get him wet; tasting him left Nolan shoving his hips down into the mattress, while Travis’s dick woke up against his tongue. 

The rest of Travis came awake with a full-body shudder and a low-voiced, _fuck, what are you_—

And really, Nolan thought it was obvious. Travis was too big for him to take down all the way, but neither Nolan nor his omega minded trying. From the way the blankets got pulled off his shoulders, Travis wanted to see him try, too.

The cooler air made Nolan shiver, goosebumps popping up along his throat. Travis was touching him now, running a restless hand through his hair, around the back of his neck; dragging a thumb along his lips, where they were stretched wet around him. He was running his mouth again, curses interspersed with soft shit that Nolan would never admit liking but that had him dripping slick and grinding against the bed.

“Fuck, baby, you gotta stop.” Travis dragged him off by the hair. “Jesus, Nolan.”

Nolan smirked down at him. “Morning.”

Travis towed him in for a kiss, groaning when he tasted himself in Nolan’s mouth. “Thought I was dreaming,” he mumbled into Nolan’s lower lip. Usually Nolan would find something to chirp in there, but at this specific moment he was more interested in the way their hips were slotting together, in the way Travis’s eyes scrunched shut when he got the right angle against his dick. “Fu-u-uck,” he said, three distinct syllables, one hand stealing down to Nolan’s ass.

Travis tried to push up against him, but Nolan was bigger, and kept him right where he was. Heat licked at the base of his spine when he ground himself back on Travis, letting him feel how wet he’d gotten. He felt—whatever. Shameless, maybe; flushed all over with his hair in his face and his dick standing straight up against his abs.

“Look at you, baby,” Travis said. “Fucking Christ, you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He spat in his palm and wrapped it around Nolan, and Nolan didn’t quite manage to catch his moan before it escaped. Maybe because his cycle was firing up again; maybe it was hitting him harder this time, because his body (and his omega) knew exactly how good it was going to be, Travis in his ear and his knot filling him up in all the right places.

And Nolan was done fucking around. He swung off Travis’s lap and long-armed a condom from the nightstand, pitched it at his face. “Come on.”

“Yeah?” Travis was making quick work of the wrapper, rolling on the latex. Nolan watched his hands and let himself imagine the two of them fucking bareback. It made him clench, and must have done something to his smell because Travis was swearing again, pushing at his shoulder and getting a hand back in his hair. Nolan wasn’t the one who liked having his hair played with, but he wasn’t complaining about it, either: just a hint of alpha control, enough to make his omega want to purr. Nolan didn’t have a good enough reason to stop it, with Travis lining up behind his hips, kissing the back of his shoulder and nipping at the tendons in his neck.

Nolan let Travis put him exactly where they both wanted him, now, on his hands and knees with his ass in the air. Nolan would have felt self-conscious, open and presenting, except that Travis was pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses along the side of his neck, opening him up with careful hands and telling him that he was perfect in a low stream of words that he could feel flowing against his skin.

It stayed slow and dreamy, this time, as they moved against each other in waves. Every time Nolan felt his body edge towards frantic, Travis took him back down, deliberate hips and that hand fisted in his hair. His omega kept up the purr in the back of his head, happy to be taken care of so well.

And Nolan was willing to put his body in Travis’s hands, for now: it’s not like he hadn’t trusted him since he was a scared rookie in a brand-new locker room. Hadn’t let Travis go to the penalty box for him, when he’d been determined to fight every one of his own battles in the WHL; hadn’t let Travis ease himself into more and more corners of his life, from the top of his recent calls to his Mario Kart leaderboard to the takeout menus stuck to his fridge.

This was an extension of that, while it was also so shatteringly new that the only things keeping him together were that hand in his hair, and Travis’s voice in his ear.

Nolan’s heat lasted two more days after that, which was totally fucking unprecedented. Also, an unprecedented amount of fucking: by the end of it they were both delirious, sore, come-drunk, dehydrated, and five pounds under their maintenance weights. Nolan was deliberately not googling things like, “how to tell if you accidentally bonded” when he was down from a cycle, because bonding was a lot more than just fucking. Like, yes, it was about fucking, but it was also about registering at the courthouse and updating emergency contacts and questions from the media and all the shit that Nolan was not trying to fuck with at this point in his life.

But like. From the purely-fucking standpoint—he was pretty sure he was a goner. And from all the nonsense Travis kept saying, whether he was balls-deep inside him or just nuzzling into the hair at the back of his neck, Nolan thought there was a non-zero chance that TK was equally—whatever.

He just didn’t need the internet to confirm that for him.

(At least not right now.)

He woke up the morning after the Sens game feeling like hell physically, but also this kind of deep, grounded contentment in every sore and aching inch of his body. Usually his omega instincts were unhappy about one thing or another—that the alpha was leaving, or that he’d been alone with only a dildo for company the whole time—even if his body had come through it okay. 

This time he and his omega were on the same damned page. And that page had his arms wrapped around Nolan’s preferred pillow, hair sticking up in every direction and patchy facial hair even worse than it usually was. The last time they’d been in the shower, Travis had been more focused on shoving him up against the wall and rimming him than like, shaving. Or whatever else.

Travis made a little snuffling noise, blinking one eye open. “Oh thank god,” was what he mumbled into the pillow.

“That’s what they all say.”

Travis smacked his hip. Left his hand there, thumb rubbing over the ridge of muscle. “No, you idiot. I mean you smell normal again. And don’t get me wrong, that was fully the hottest thing I’ve ever done, but—”

“Tired, buddy?” Nolan smirked over at him. 

“I could sleep for a fucking week and my dick is about to fall off.” Travis sat up, yawning and scrubbing at his hair. “Jesus fuck.”

“It wasn’t _that_ good."

Travis slapped him, on the shoulder this time. “That’s not what you said last night, Patty.”

He rolled his eyes. “You can’t hold that shit against me. It’s like, in the rulebook.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Travis parried, looking all smug and irrepressible and terribly, horribly pleased with himself. “You said that, too.”

Maybe Nolan could smother himself in his second-favorite pillow. He was really giving it a shot when Travis dropped a kiss on the back of his neck and started whining about being hungry. The grocery situation was hopeless in both of their apartments, so they were going to have to actually make an effort to get food, ugh. (The laundry situation was equally sad; Travis had staggered downstairs a day ago, to grab every set of clean sheets he could find, and they’d fucked them all up pretty much immediately.) (Nolan’s couch was a lost cause.)

Nolan didn’t want to move—was meditating on whether delivery brunch was a thing on Tuesdays, if you had enough money (and if it wasn’t, whether it would be a peak omega move if he made Travis go get it)—but the perpetual annoyance machine that was TK was in full swing, so he dragged himself to his feet and did _not_, absolutely _did not_, limp on the way over to his closet for track pants and a hoodie.

TK was wearing Nolan’s clothes again, even though he had his own shit three floors down. He looked ridiculous, sweatpants puddling around his feet and swimming in a _Property of the Philadelphia Flyers #19 Nolan Patrick_ sweatshirt. (Which was maybe not the _most_ inaccurate piece of clothing he could have fished off Nolan’s floor.) (Nolan’s omega was pleased.) (And Nolan wanted to sneak a picture before Teeks took it back off. Just to like, have. For himself. Or whatever.)

But at least he put shoes on before they left the apartment, so. Progress.

They always argued about whether they were going to walk or drive to their favorite diner. Nolan had a certain ability to chill that TK lacked. (TK would call it laziness, but nobody should listen to anything TK said.) So Nolan was usually on Team We Own Cars for a Reason, and TK was on Team You’re From Winnipeg and It’s Above 0C, So Are You Soft Now, Eh?

TK opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, when Nolan pitched his car keys at this head. But then he shut it again, which was maybe the first time in the history of Travis Konecny that he’d ever allowed his brain:mouth filter to do its job.

“Shut up,” Nolan told him, anyway. “You don’t want to walk, either.”

TK made a face.

Nolan wanted to hear him say it. “Say it.”

“Fuck you, bud! I could walk. I could totally walk.”

“You don’t want to, though.”

“_Fine_!” TK snapped, hitting the unlock button for Nolan’s car. “Like, this one time, I will _maybe_ admit that I’d rather drive,” and anything else he said about the reasons why he was so goddamned tired was totally fucking irrelevant, because he’d admitted Nolan was right and he was wrong. Victory was sweet.

Not sweet enough that Nolan was going to let TK pick the playlist, though.

The diner existed in the middle of the Venn diagram between OG Philly grunge and the hipster invasion, so it served shit like shakshuka but also refused to replace the cracking vinyl in its booths. They both usually got the same orders—a nutrition plan-approved spinach, mushroom, and cheese omelet with a side of chicken sausage for Nolan; and some ridiculous breakfast pizza thing for TK that he refused to report accurately in his nutrient tracking app.

“How many breakfasts can I eat,” TK mused, staring down at the sticky, laminated menu.

Nolan was more interested in mainlining a jumbo vanilla steamer, because he was dehydrated enough that he could lie and say he was using it as a recovery beverage. He’d just, like, forgotten to tell them to leave the whipped cream off. He set his mug down and licked a remnant of cream off his lip. TK choked on his sip of coffee.

“Wow,” Nolan told him. “Buddy. Get your shit together.”

“So this crap is why I just can’t believe you didn’t _know_.” TK shook his head, like Nolan was very slow. “Seriously? You don’t remember that time in Calgary, when we were wrestling over the Xbox controller and I had to like, sprint into the shower? That wasn’t because I was somehow dirty after like, the bus ride from the rink. That was because I had to jerk off.”

Nolan couldn’t resist. “Think that makes you pretty dirty.”

“Oh, fuck you, you like it.” Nolan had to make a face at that, because, whatever, fair. He’d always liked TK, against his better judgment. And he liked that everything felt the same as it usually did, except it was all totally and completely new: their ankles hooked together under the table, the ache inside him from all the time he’d spent knotted up on Travis’s (frankly absurd) dick. The judgmental/amused look they were getting from the waitress.

TK got three breakfasts. Nolan got two, but compensated for it in glasses of OJ and frothy hot drinks. Halfway through his plate of pancakes (breakfast #2), TK put on his serious face and poked Nolan in the ankle with his foot.

“Hey.”

“What.” Nolan stole a bite of his hash browns.

“So, uh. Bud. Are we like—doing this?”

What Nolan was doing was stealing more hash browns, but he stopped when Travis kicked him again. “I dunno, Teeks,” he said, slowly, just to make the little fucker sweat it out. “Does it seem like we’re doing this?”

“You’re the one with _experience_ or whatever. I didn’t know if things would like, be different. Now that you’re done with. You know. Your heat.”

Nolan rolled his eyes. “I said we were.”

“Holy shit,” Travis said. He got the biggest and stupidest smile on his face that Nolan had ever seen, and Nolan had seen some goddamned stupid smiles on TK’s face since the first day of his rookie training camp. It was his turn to kick TK in the ankle, but he didn’t move his hand when TK reached across the table to lace their fingers together, so. It was whatever.

Nolan wasn’t _worried_ about walking into the Skate Zone for their afternoon video session, but neither would he say that he was _not worried_, either. There was basically-a-beta Patty, and then there was Nolan Patrick the actual omega, who caused a bar fight and missed a game and looked like Travis Konecny’s personal chew toy and had to smell like—well. Like he’d been getting fucked for three days straight.

Nolan would like to say that TK was oblivious to the freak out he definitely was not having, but it turned out TK knew him too well for that. “It’s gonna be fine, babe.”

And it was, in its own very special fucked-up kind of way. All the guys cheered like a pack of idiots when they made it into the lounge. Congratulated TK on becoming a real man. Congratulated Nolan on finally getting with the program (“_Everyone knew_?” he hissed, and TK kind of halfway winced at him and said, “Basically?”). Sanheim’s shiner had gone down, and goddamned G gave the most awkward little captain speech of Nolan’s life (and fine, maybe Nolan was going to have to reevaluate his alpha cockblocking as an attempt to keep TK from humiliating himself, because god knew TK needed all the help he could get). He could feel himself blushing; TK just looked pleased with himself, because he was immune to social anxiety, even if he was getting absolutely _roasted_ about wearing Nolan’s sweatshirt.

But even TK looked a little embarrassed when Gudas pelted them with rose petals at the end of G’s talk, yelling something about it being a Czech tradition. (Jake observed that this was not his experience with the culture of his homeland.)

So basically, it was chaos. Some nice, normal, Philadelphia Flyers chaos, even if they got herded onto opposite sides of the video room because “nobody wants to smell whatever you’d be getting up to, boys”; countered by Ghost: “too late, I think we already know”; finished by Provy (the last port of sanity in a sea of idiot alphas) yelling at them to all shut up because he wanted to go the hell home. Hartsy agreed, politely, and that made everyone settle down. Because he was the team baby, and no one wanted to upset him. Even if they had no problem upsetting TK or Patty. (Who, for the record, was a full month younger than Carter.) (It was fine; Nolan was just saying.)

They were going to have to talk about it with management, and Nolan was going to have to talk about it with the medical staff (and fight another round over going on birth control), and Jesus, they were going to have to tell their parents, and probably release a statement, and answer media questions about it, and they were going to get chirped every game for the rest of their lives.

So basically, all the shit that Nolan had always wanted to avoid.

But somehow, sitting in the front left corner of the video room with TK way in the back right, he was fine with it. It was going to be a mess if it blew up, and his life would probably be easier if it had never happened.

There were going to be upsides, though, on more days of the year than when he was in heat. Even if Travis stole his favorite pillow. Even if he couldn’t sit still long enough to go see a movie in a theatre like a normal human. Even if he never shut up, and acted like a spazz, and always had at least 35 unread text messages.

Nolan felt his phone buzz against his leg. He eased it out, checking it under the table.

From TK: _miss u babe_.

It was too much to hope that this would go unnoticed.

“They’re texting!” JVR yelled from beside Travis, immediately. The little idiot was never on his phone during video and so of course, of fucking _course_, he had no stealth about it.

“Can confirm.” Provy was a goddamned traitor and Nolan took back every nice thing he'd ever thought about him.

So Nolan and TK left Vorhees with a penalty workout for being on their phones during video, deferred by G until they looked “less pathetic.” They sniped at each other all the way home about whose fault it was—clearly not Nolan’s; TK was trash and whining _but the back of your neck looked so good_ was not an excuse. Nolan insulted TK’s driving; TK insulted Nolan’s playlist. Nolan told TK he parked too close to a pillar in the garage; TK told Nolan he could start driving his own ass to New Jersey, then.

Nolan followed TK into his apartment, and TK followed him onto the couch. He dropped his head in Nolan’s lap; Nolan slipped his hand into TK’s hair, massaged gentle fingertips against his scalp, and pretended to be annoyed about the running commentary on _River Monsters_.

(And he guessed that he wouldn’t have too many complaints if this was his life, forever.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] call me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22271677) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)


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